You know how these things go by now. Every month (this being the 7th, as indicated by the “#7” in the title), I watch a random anime. Here are the other 6. I have to plug them, you know. I do this with a site called randomanime.org. It gives you random anime.

Last time we got an anime I didn’t quite finish for time reasons. Um, I still haven’t. I should probably get around to that. How about something short and sweet this time? A romance, maybe. Yes, please give me that.

So my summoning of romance kind of worked. You know, it’s just alongside harem and ecchi. We’re not quite on the same page, but we are reading the same book. I have heard of this series, but let’s read up on it.

“Youkai Academy is a seemingly normal boarding school, except that its pupils are monsters learning to coexist with humans. All students attend in human form and take normal academic subjects, such as literature, gym, foreign language, and mathematics. However, there is one golden rule at Youkai Academy—all humans found on school grounds are to be executed immediately! Tsukune Aono is an average teenager who is unable to get into any high school because of his bad grades. His parents inadvertently enroll him into Youkai Academy as a last-ditch effort to secure his education. As Tsukune unknowingly enters this new world, he has a run-in with the most attractive girl on campus, Moka Akashiya. Deciding to stay in the perilous realm in order to further his relationship with Moka, he does not realize that beneath her beauty lies a menacing monster—a vampire. Rosario to Vampire is a supernatural school comedy that explores Tsukune’s romantic exploits, experiences, and misadventures with a bevy of beautiful but dangerous creatures.”

So it’s ecchi Iruma Goes to Demon School? That’s what I’m getting out of it. Actually sounds alright. I don’t imagine a home run here, but I think it could actually be pretty decent. Let’s take a look.

Hey, guess what, I actually watched all of season one this time, and in only a few days. Go me! Hold on. Let me get back into character. Now you may remember back when I talked about Heaven’s Lost Property I mentioned that I’m not a big ecchi fan.

It’s simple why. I think it gets in the way of telling a good story and generally interrupts things in fairly unnecessary ways. Same way I feel about adult scenes in visual novels, for instance. I also just watched a lot of ecchi when I was younger, and I think I burned myself out. But I liked Lost Property because of how shamelessly ecchi it was. It was hilarious to me.

Rosario + Vampire is what I would call another very solid ecchi series, but not in the same vein. It’s the type of series that doesn’t really go all-in on the ecchi, but it isn’t exactly afraid to show it off either.

The plotlines generally follow something ecchi, whether that’s a beach episode, pool episode, or someone trying to seduce the protagonist. All of the characters fawn over Tsukune. Fairly normal ecchi stuff. There are also so many panty shots they lose all meaning. If anything, it makes you realize how short anime skirts are. It’s realistic, I suppose.

Unlike Lost Property, it doesn’t really cash in on being ecchi. It’s just an ecchi anime, not an anime about being ecchi. But that doesn’t mean Rosario is worse. To be honest, I enjoyed it more, and that’s likely because of the story.

I really like Iruma-kun. I don’t hide that. I think the series is a blast, and while it’s far superior to Rosario in every way, I was pretty spot on when I said they were similar. Both focus on a somewhat wimpy boy trying to hide the fact he’s human in monster school. And they both are swarmed by girls, just one a bit more forcefully.

But Rosario handles the monsters in a neat way. Rather than being more wacky, they’re actually quite terrifying. Do you see this spider girl? I’m going to have nightmares. The way they get away with this is by having the monster stay in human form and then they also have the scary part hidden away.

That’s why Tsukune can stay in monster school because he still looks like everyone else. Some of the forms are really cool, some are creepy as hell, and some are kinda bland, like Moka’s transformation. Wow, she has silver hair and becomes a badass. Scary…

Really, a lot of the rules that govern this monster world are kind of half-assed. I mean, there’s nothing all that deep, but there’s no need to be. Yukari’s a witch that can use magic as vague as that is. Kurumu can grow really long nails, fly, and turn men into slaves. Moka sucks blood. There’s an ice girl. Some weird dude with a long neck. Monster is a very loose term.

But again, not taking this ecchi series seriously, it’s a lot of fun, I must admit. There’s something really entertaining about taking this typical ecchi setup of all these girls interested in the wimp and making them all monsters. It leads to a lot of fun stuff that spices the series up a lot.

Most episodes are self-contained plots, but I think that actually works in this series favor. It may feel a little rushed because of that, but let’s be honest, you’re not watching this to be enchanted by a beautiful tale. You’re either watching it for the fan service or the laughs, and Rosario has tons of both.

The humor is very samey, but I did find it pretty funny. It’s very formulaic humor. It’s like the writers had a checklist of each joke they had to make. They need to fit in the part with Moka sucks Tsukune (his blood, ok), where they stare into each other eyes, where the bat guy says how long the battles take, when Moka transforms.

If the second season wouldn’t change anything and continue with the same formula, I could see things getting old, but as far as all of season one, I still found it pretty funny. I laughed a lot, and it gave me a pretty good time.

It will depend on how they handled things. Whether they think keeping things fresh is just adding more monster girl’s to the harem, or actually doing things interesting with the ones they have. That’s one problem many harems fall for. They think throwing more in will keep it going. It usually doesn’t.

At the same time, if they did go that route, Rosario has a bit more potential. While what qualifies as “monsters” is pretty broad, that does help give us a lot of crazy scenarios. So if they did continue to add more fuel to the harem, I would hope they really run with it.

Give us some ghost girl. How about one with a really stupid power like the jelly man or the one long-neck guy? As of now, most of the main characters are pretty normal. As normal as a witch, succubus, and a vampire can be, of course. My point is run with it. This story has a lot of potential.

I’m not the biggest harem fan, and I don’t think that’s because I just dislike it, or there’s something particularly bad about the genre. I think I’m really just tired of seeing it done in the exact same way over and over again.

Isekai is another genre that’s done to death, but like I talked about a little in this post, even when Isekais are samey, they can still be somewhat unique. Harems, unless you have some pull dragging people in, tend to be boring to me.

Rosario manages to very much be a harem with all the common tropes you’ll find but has an interesting enough setting and characters that it’s actually fun again. I really enjoyed Rosario much more than I initially thought when I saw it. It’s pretty good.

If you can get past the tropes of ecchi and harem series, you’ll probably enjoy it too, but if you already like those genres, I really see no reason why you shouldn’t give it a shot. It’s fun, and if nothing else, it will give you a good few laughs.

Thank you very much for reading

More monster school shows, please! I would definitely attend one, wouldn’t you?